Farm bill conferees huddle

The Farm Bill’s top four negotiators met Wednesday and authorized staff to step up discussions on the commodity title in anticipation that the full House-Senate conference could begin the last week of October.

The meeting, hosted by House Agriculture Committee Chairman Frank Lucas in his Longworth offices,was the first since the House finally appointed its conferees last Saturday.

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Present were Senate Agriculture Chairwoman Debbie Stabenow (D-Mich.) and her ranking Republican, Mississippi Sen. Thad Cochran, as well as Minnesota Rep. Collin Peterson, the ranking Democrat on the House side.

“I think we can get a farm bill. They sounded optimistic to me,” Cochran told POLITICO outside. But members in both parties said it remains to be seen what the fallout will be from the last few weeks of conflict over the government shutdown.

From a schedule standpoint, it has already been costly, delaying the appointment of conferees and now the first meeting.

Lucas and Stabenow anticipate that Congress will be out of session next week, meaning the earliest a full conference can meet is the week of Oct. 27.

“We’ve empowered our staffs to go to a new level of work and if you have not worked with the chairwoman, you don’t know how much telephone time that can be,” Lucas said. “We will be in constant contact,” Stabenow laughed.

“I’m with them,” said Peterson but he admits that a lot depends on how the GOP leadership and tea party forces react to their embarrassing losses in the shutdown battle.

“Having leadership muck around in this is not helpful,” Peterson told POLITICO. “It could go either way. These guys could exact a pound of flesh out of us because of what’s happened to them with the budget: `We’re going to take it out on the farm bill.’”

“It could go the other way: `We’ve had enough of this we’re going to back off.’ It’s hard to know how it is going to play but I’m concerned about this.